Continuing Segregation Is Hurting U.S. Competitiveness

By Laura Fitzpatrick

Talk about a dream deferred. African-American and Latino schoolchildren are more segregated, according to a January report from UCLA's Civil Rights Project, than they were at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, in 1968. Nearly 39% of blacks and 40% of Latinos attended schools composed of 90% to 100% students of color in the 2006-07 school year, the report found, and blacks and Latinos are far more likely than their white peers to attend high-poverty schools and "dropout factories" where huge numbers of students don't graduate. With the segment of nonwhite American students at 44% and climbing, the potential economic consequences are dire. "In a world economy where success is dependent on knowledge," the report said, "major sections of the U.S. face the threat of declining average educational levels as the proportion of children attending inferior segregated schools continues to rise."